After bowing out of one cooperative looking to buy the team, new sources are saying that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Tagg Romney, the son of former GOP nominee Mitt Romney, are teaming up in a new bid to purchase the Miami Marlins baseball team.
Bush and Romney have reportedly joined forces with several others including “Quogue Capital investment fund founder Wayne Rothbaum, Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine and former Arizona Diamondbacks general manager Dave Stewart,” according to the Associated Press.
The effort to purchase the team has had many ups and downs pitting buyers against each other, then seeing them join forces, only to see their coalition fall apart. Now the buyers are becoming rivals once again.
For instance, Bush initially led a group in opposition to former New York Yankee Derek Jeter who had assembled a set of buyers himself. Last year Bush dropped his initial effort and joined Jeter’s coalition. However, by May of this year, Bush once again dropped out of the effort to buy the Marlins.
Now Bush is Jeter’s rival for the purchase once again, the AP reports.
In May, when Bush quit the Jeter-led cooperative, only Tagg Romney’s offer remained on the table. But with Bush joining Romney, the Massachusetts scion’s bid becomes stronger.
The Marlins are struggling to stay out of last place in the National League East this year and they haven’t been in the playoffs since 2003. That hasn’t put a lid on the team’s value, apparently.
Current owner Jeffrey Loria paid $158.5 million for the Marlins in 2002, but some estimate that the next buyers will have to pony up over a billion dollars to pick up the team.
The quest to buy the Marlins has taken many twists and turns and even if a deal is reached it will have to be approved by a 75 percent vote from the rest of the league’s owners.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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